It's officially Day 10, and yet there's still no sign of any silkworm hatching. I'm starting to wonder if these were defective eggs or if there is another problem like refrigerator burn (if that even exists... I know that happens for a lot of embryos kept in freezers, but I'm not sure if that would apply for eggs that were kept in the normal part of the refrigerator over the course of several winter months) that is preventing the eggs from hatching properly.
I'm not liking the signs, anyhow. Some of the eggs have turned a pearly yellow or off-white, signifying that they were either infertile or had not come to term, which is fine. However, the rest of the eggs have turned a mostly grayish or semi-brown color as opposed to their formerly dark coloration. Most of the eggs are now deflated in the centers. I'm assuming that this is proper for silkworm egg development, but it's been a while since I've kept silkworms (the last time was probably two-four years ago), so I can't recall if this is the normal course of action. I've never bought silkworm eggs from a dealer before; we usually either bred our own silkworm eggs, ensuring a trustworthy population from already established cultures and generations, or got some live silkworms that were either in their second to third instar from a friend, so this is new to us.
If the silkworms don't start coming out this week, I will assume that they won't come out at all and are defective eggs. If that's the case, then this will be both the first and last time I'll buy eggs from Coastal Silkworms, and I'll have to contact them to complain and possibly ask for some sort of refund. How utterly disappointing.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
Official Day 1: Taking out the silkworm eggs
Hi, again! Spring has finally arrived in my area. It's awfully late this year; it's already April 19th.
The mulberry leaves have finally started sprouting, and the first cherry blossoms have already dropped, giving way to new spring leaves. I may take some pictures of the mulberry trees to give an idea of what the leafy situation is right now.
The mulberry leaves have been growing for the past week or so, so we decided that now is the best time for taking out the silkworm eggs. We've kept them refrigerated well since the last post, so it's been a little over a month. If everything goes well, the silkworm eggs should hatch in 2-10 days.
Here are pictures of the petri dish containing the eggs:
The dish even comes equipped with a little instructional blurb:
We're planning on leaving the silkworm eggs in the petri dish until they hatch out; then we'll start transferring them to a larger shoe box or plastic container. The petri dish is not tightly sealed, so if any silkworms hatch out these next few days, they shouldn't suffocate to death. I anticipate that today is the start of a very hectic month of daily feeding, cleaning, and caring of the silkworm larvae. It'll be 4-6 weeks before they'll undergo metamorphosis to become breeding, adult moths.
It's rather sad, but adult moths live short lives full of nothing but four main goals: find a mate, have sex, lay eggs, and die. They unfortunately don't have functioning mouths, so they most likely die of starvation shortly after breeding. They're quite cute, though, and are furry little innocuous buggers. On the downside, the sexual discharge or fluid reeks and often stains the surrounding material a distasteful shade of yellowish brown (sort of like iodine, only smellier).
Hopefully we can stick to the regime of daily silkworm cleaning and feeding. If so, then we can expect many silkworms to become moths by next month and eventually pair off. Of course, we only need a few pairs; if we have a lot of cocoons, we may set aside just a few silk cocoons for breeding and allow those to hatch while boiling the rest for silk reeling. Remember, there are 500 eggs in that petri dish, give or take, and since an average female silk moth can lay around 200-500 eggs, just imagine how many eggs we'll have if we allowed all of them to breed! That would be insanity!
We'll be monitoring the eggs closely for the next few days; if I remember, I'll post an update on the first egg hatching.
The mulberry leaves have finally started sprouting, and the first cherry blossoms have already dropped, giving way to new spring leaves. I may take some pictures of the mulberry trees to give an idea of what the leafy situation is right now.
The mulberry leaves have been growing for the past week or so, so we decided that now is the best time for taking out the silkworm eggs. We've kept them refrigerated well since the last post, so it's been a little over a month. If everything goes well, the silkworm eggs should hatch in 2-10 days.
Here are pictures of the petri dish containing the eggs:
The dish even comes equipped with a little instructional blurb:
We're planning on leaving the silkworm eggs in the petri dish until they hatch out; then we'll start transferring them to a larger shoe box or plastic container. The petri dish is not tightly sealed, so if any silkworms hatch out these next few days, they shouldn't suffocate to death. I anticipate that today is the start of a very hectic month of daily feeding, cleaning, and caring of the silkworm larvae. It'll be 4-6 weeks before they'll undergo metamorphosis to become breeding, adult moths.
It's rather sad, but adult moths live short lives full of nothing but four main goals: find a mate, have sex, lay eggs, and die. They unfortunately don't have functioning mouths, so they most likely die of starvation shortly after breeding. They're quite cute, though, and are furry little innocuous buggers. On the downside, the sexual discharge or fluid reeks and often stains the surrounding material a distasteful shade of yellowish brown (sort of like iodine, only smellier).
Hopefully we can stick to the regime of daily silkworm cleaning and feeding. If so, then we can expect many silkworms to become moths by next month and eventually pair off. Of course, we only need a few pairs; if we have a lot of cocoons, we may set aside just a few silk cocoons for breeding and allow those to hatch while boiling the rest for silk reeling. Remember, there are 500 eggs in that petri dish, give or take, and since an average female silk moth can lay around 200-500 eggs, just imagine how many eggs we'll have if we allowed all of them to breed! That would be insanity!
We'll be monitoring the eggs closely for the next few days; if I remember, I'll post an update on the first egg hatching.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Silkworms Arrive!
My package arrived in the mail today!
Here is the invoice for 500 normal silkworm eggs from Coastal Silkworms:
For now, we're storing the eggs in our refrigerator until the first mulberry leaves arrive.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
First Post: Ordered silkworms today
Welcome to The Silkworm Chronicles (a.k.a. The Silky Chronicles; you may refer to this website by whichever name)!
I created this new blog to keep a record of my new batch of silkworms this year (2013).
When I was younger from as early as first or second grade, I constantly kept pet silkworms for many years, but my last silkworms died out several years ago because of overexposure to moisture as well as under-feeding (you have to change the leaves anywhere from several times to once a day- I got lazy and started to only change them every few days, which made layers upon layers of digested leaves pile up onto the silkworms and feces, which was just gross, caused some malnourishment, and yeah, I'm sure you can guess what's coming...) and subsequent dietary and fungal problems (yes, I know, kind of gross, but that risk comes with the territory of keeping silkworms). My silkworms paid dearly for my wonderful laziness, so this year I hope to rectify these mistakes with better care of my silkworms. -_-
So far, the only varieties I have kept are the typical Bombyx mori and a whiter variant. At one point, I may have also had the sexually dimorphic zebra variety, but I can't be so certain.
Today my mom and I ordered a fresh batch of 500 "normal" eggs from Coastal Silkworms, a website known on some reptilian forums as a relatively cheap supplier of silkworm eggs. We ordered them with ice to prevent early hatching; in our area right now, the mulberry leaves haven't begun to grow yet, so we plan to refrigerate the eggs until sometime in the later spring, when the tender shoots begin to emerge.
My current designs for the silkworms are to grow them on normal mulberry leaves to at least the 3rd instar before buying the colored chow from Lady Silkworm's website and feeding them some of that up to the cocoon stage. According to reports from other sources, I probably only need to feed them the chow for 4-7 days before they begin cocooning for the dye to take full effect. I think it's an interesting and seemingly harmless way- at least, that's what the website professes; I'll have to see about this myself- to get colored silk more easily, so I want to test it out this year. Originally, I never fed my silkworms anything but the natural mulberry leaf, so this year I'm obviously trying to deviate from the norm and get funky. ;)
I've reeled silk at least 3 times from the silk cocoons. I usually just picked the largest cocoons as well as the stained cocoons and set those aside for mating purposes; I then reeled silk from the rest of the smaller cocoons using a boiling pot of water and some bamboo chopsticks over a hot stove and a trashcan. Just a warning: For those of you who are new at the silkworm game, most people, including me, reel in the typical fashion, meaning that for best silk results, the pupa is killed inside by the boiling water in order to keep the cocoon intact. Worm Spit is a great website for people who want to learn more about the process of reeling silk either by Peace Silk methods, which are professed to be more difficult because the cocoon is ripped open but allow the silkworm to fulfill its full life cycle, or conventional methods, which allow for more consistent results.
My mom says that she's interested in keeping some of the cocoons for facial moisturizing/ softening properties. Lady Silkworm sells cut cocoons for this purpose, and my mom wants to try it out herself.
This year, I will be gathering mulberries from around my neighborhood community. I have a single, young mulberry tree in my backyard, which will suffice for emergencies, but I will also have to gather leaves from elsewhere. Luckily, mulberries are pretty abundant in my neighborhood, so I just have to set aside a little time. I can always keep a stash of mulberry leaves in my refrigerator, but from previous experience, I know that there's often too much moisture, so I have to take care to wipe off the leaves with a paper towel before laying them down.
Again, I'm hoping to keep up with my silkies on this blog. I might take pictures and post them up, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Thanks for visiting!
I created this new blog to keep a record of my new batch of silkworms this year (2013).
When I was younger from as early as first or second grade, I constantly kept pet silkworms for many years, but my last silkworms died out several years ago because of overexposure to moisture as well as under-feeding (you have to change the leaves anywhere from several times to once a day- I got lazy and started to only change them every few days, which made layers upon layers of digested leaves pile up onto the silkworms and feces, which was just gross, caused some malnourishment, and yeah, I'm sure you can guess what's coming...) and subsequent dietary and fungal problems (yes, I know, kind of gross, but that risk comes with the territory of keeping silkworms). My silkworms paid dearly for my wonderful laziness, so this year I hope to rectify these mistakes with better care of my silkworms. -_-
So far, the only varieties I have kept are the typical Bombyx mori and a whiter variant. At one point, I may have also had the sexually dimorphic zebra variety, but I can't be so certain.
Today my mom and I ordered a fresh batch of 500 "normal" eggs from Coastal Silkworms, a website known on some reptilian forums as a relatively cheap supplier of silkworm eggs. We ordered them with ice to prevent early hatching; in our area right now, the mulberry leaves haven't begun to grow yet, so we plan to refrigerate the eggs until sometime in the later spring, when the tender shoots begin to emerge.
My current designs for the silkworms are to grow them on normal mulberry leaves to at least the 3rd instar before buying the colored chow from Lady Silkworm's website and feeding them some of that up to the cocoon stage. According to reports from other sources, I probably only need to feed them the chow for 4-7 days before they begin cocooning for the dye to take full effect. I think it's an interesting and seemingly harmless way- at least, that's what the website professes; I'll have to see about this myself- to get colored silk more easily, so I want to test it out this year. Originally, I never fed my silkworms anything but the natural mulberry leaf, so this year I'm obviously trying to deviate from the norm and get funky. ;)
I've reeled silk at least 3 times from the silk cocoons. I usually just picked the largest cocoons as well as the stained cocoons and set those aside for mating purposes; I then reeled silk from the rest of the smaller cocoons using a boiling pot of water and some bamboo chopsticks over a hot stove and a trashcan. Just a warning: For those of you who are new at the silkworm game, most people, including me, reel in the typical fashion, meaning that for best silk results, the pupa is killed inside by the boiling water in order to keep the cocoon intact. Worm Spit is a great website for people who want to learn more about the process of reeling silk either by Peace Silk methods, which are professed to be more difficult because the cocoon is ripped open but allow the silkworm to fulfill its full life cycle, or conventional methods, which allow for more consistent results.
My mom says that she's interested in keeping some of the cocoons for facial moisturizing/ softening properties. Lady Silkworm sells cut cocoons for this purpose, and my mom wants to try it out herself.
This year, I will be gathering mulberries from around my neighborhood community. I have a single, young mulberry tree in my backyard, which will suffice for emergencies, but I will also have to gather leaves from elsewhere. Luckily, mulberries are pretty abundant in my neighborhood, so I just have to set aside a little time. I can always keep a stash of mulberry leaves in my refrigerator, but from previous experience, I know that there's often too much moisture, so I have to take care to wipe off the leaves with a paper towel before laying them down.
Again, I'm hoping to keep up with my silkies on this blog. I might take pictures and post them up, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Thanks for visiting!
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